Decent RTS stapled to a masterpiece of a visual novel. Despite the poor integration of narrative and combat gameplay, the former is so amazing that it doesn't really matter. The thirteen protagonists' stories are all compelling and are intertwined in a masterful way and even though the game's story starts out as 'mere' scifi, by the end it is so much more than that. The final message truly is beautiful.

I also have to praise the visuals and art style, indubitably the prettiest VN I have played. The soundtrack isn't always great, but there are more than enough brilliant tracks to help lift those crucial gameplay and story moments to the next level. These (final) moments are also the only times when it feels like the combat gameplay adds to the experience, combining with the story and music to make you want to fight for these characters' future.

So despite the lesser, mandatory RTS portion I would recommend this game to all visual novel fans, because what else does one need in a story other than love, hope and mechs? :D

A day after having finished the game, I am still riding the high of completion. It is a bittersweet feeling, as the experience was almost magical, I wanted to keep playing, but I ran out of side quests, shrines (so ingenious) and caves (so fun) to explore. That TotK managed to make me feel this way at all is impressive, because open-world games usually aren't my cup of tea, their vast worlds filled with endless things to do tend to give my dumb brain choice anxiety. Especially when a lot of the game's overworld is the same as BotW!

Ascend and Ultrahand made the actual gameplay just so much more fun than BotW's, it got to the point where I saw ledges IRL and my brain would tell me ''Ascend spot!'' :D also a shoutout to the skydiving, it is possibly one of the most fun things I have done in a video game. Another point of contrast for me was the story, yes, I wished there was more of it, but it is done better here than in BotW. A lot of it is still told in flashbacks, but at least these flashbacks told us something new, I didn't know where the game was headed, whereas in BotW we already knew the beginning and the end after completing the Great Plateau. The same goes for TotK's characters, there is less focus on dead ones and the ones in the present have more agency, the champions for example. They actually assist throughout the story instead of mostly being confined to their homelands and firing a lazor to help defeat Ganon at the end.

All these aspects were however carried by the music, it greatly uplifted most of the gameplay and all of the story sequences for me. Ascending the Wind Temple as the music swells, coming to a climax as you jump into the vortex is one of my favorite gameplay experiences of all time. I also loved the haunting chanting of Hyrule Castle's depths, the ethereal tranquility of the Zora Waterworks, the epicness of Colgera's battle theme, the emotion of drawing the Master Sword, the magical whimsy of the skydiving theme, the big horn that accompanied each descent into Hyrule's underworld, the descent into Ganondorf's lair and the calming medley of Dragon Head Island. I spent at least a few in-game days at the latter watching the sun set and rise.

And yes, even though it is a Switch game, it can look very beautiful at times, my favorite scenes being the sky around sunrise/sundown, the bright green grassy hills and the glistening shoreline. I also loved the initial darkness of the Depths, it made me feel truly uneasy and created a great sense of mystery and peril, something I had not felt in a video game in a very long time. I went in spoiler-free so I did not expect the Depths at all, it was a great feeling exploring the place for the first few hours, especially because I accidentally found the Sea Breeze Shield early on (used it for almost the entire game :D). Of course eventually the area lost its magic after figuring out there were basically only a few things in the depths but still, even then I enjoyed diving back into the depths after acquiring a few treasure charts. I really loved finding the treasure charts because I knew each one marked an amazing treasure, one of my favorite things to find in the sky for sure. I wish there was more sky to explore!

In my ramblings I also briefly want to comment on the game's sound design, because it too is amazing. The way the music adapts to what you are doing is truly great and makes the soundtrack even more spectacular, increasing or decreasing in intensity, or signifying certain moments, like the aforementioned horn when diving into the depths. The way things echo in caves is pleasing too, especially how different size caves have different echo patterns. Skydiving is made extra satisfying by the big splash of water at the end and the water raining back down again.

As much as I love this game however, it is not perfect, but my qualms are minor. It would have been nice if the game's UI sound effects and the like were slightly different so it wouldn't feel so much like BotW DLC at times. Additionally, some slight changes to the basic combat music would have been appreciated, as the ''doo doo doo'' at the start of it definitely annoyed me after playing both BotW and TotK extensively. Another problem I had was that things just despawn much too quickly, I couldn't explore a cave without finding my vehicle gone after returning to the entrance and if I fought lots of enemies, chances were that not all of their drops would still be around after the fight was over. Speaking of drops, it was impossible for me to upgrade the Zonai armor much because I never managed to find Zonai Captain 2.0 horns after a certain point in the game. And finally, silver enemies are just wayyyy too spongy, they require so much damage in order to go down that it renders a lot of the Zonai devices useless in combat. I usually just defaulted to sneak attacking after throwing a mushroom cloud or blowing them into water (admittedly very fun C:) because otherwise it would just take too long to defeat them to be worth the effort. Finally, I didn't enjoy most of the itemless shrines, a lot of them just boiled down to wailing on powerful Zonai constructs for half a minute with a stick or just ultrahanding a flamethrower and walking forward until everything was dead. But honestly these are just nitpicks and basically my only complaints with the game, whereas I could honestly keep gushing about things I liked about the game for far longer :D I would honestly recommend this game to anyone open to an open-world game

Alright, having edited this review for the past few days and using it to organize my thoughts on TotK, I think I can finally let it go... thank you for the experience Nintendo, I cannot wait for the next Zelda c:
tl;dr, I loved this game, especially the gameplay and the soundtrack <3